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The Aces On Bridge by Bobby Wolff
Opening Lead: ♠2
In today's deal North's raise of two hearts to three was just a little pushy. However, since his double was in the balancing seat, South might easily have held up to a 10-count for his minimum response in hearts. South accepted the invitation, since he did have a little in hand, and West led the spade two against the game.
When East took his ace, the killing diamond switch looked somewhat unappealing, so he returned a spade to the king. After drawing trump in three rounds and ruffing a spade, declarer led a low club to the jack and ace. The club 10 lost to the king, and when the clubs did not break, two diamonds eventually had to be lost.
If declarer had realized that his game needed a favorable lie of the clubs, there would have been no need to fear a club ruff. Accordingly, this suit should have been tackled earlier. There was the extra chance that East (who was marked with most of the missing points) held the king doubleton — together with a significant club spot.
After winning the spade return at trick two, declarer should have crossed to dummy with a trump and played a club to the jack and ace. Now two more rounds of trump, ending in dummy, would have allowed a low club to be led toward the 10. There are still two entries to dummy (the diamond ace and the deferred spade ruff) to enable declarer to unblock the club 10 and later cash the queen.
Bid with the aces
Answer: 1NT
A double by you of one heart would be penalties, not responsive. (If you have spades or diamonds, you bid your suits in a sensible order.) So a double would be perfectly sensible, except that you do not really know what to do when West runs to a black suit. Therefore you might well give up on penalties and simply bid one no-trump yourself, which describes your values and stoppers perfectly.
This Hand of the Day was originally published on aces.bridgeblogging.com.
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